Preview: Niels “Shoe” Meulman’s “Unism” at White Walls

Dutch designer and painter Niels “Shoe” Meulman forayed into the art world as a young graffiti writer in the late ’70s, going on to establish a multi-faceted career as a designer, illustrator and painter over the last several decades. Working with a rhythmic letter style that borrows from both graffiti and calligraphy, Meulman refers to his work as “caligraffiti.” His paintings represent a meditative practice of making the same mark repeatedly until the architecture of the letter breaks down and loses its semantic meaning. Meulman will open his solo show, “Unism,” (pronounced un-ism, a term coined by Meulman to refer to what he calls “the power of reversal”) at White Walls in San Francisco on July 6. Take a look at a sneak peek of the show below, images courtesy of White Walls.